Capsule technology continues to be subject to development and improvements. In particular, over the last decades, a need for providing better tamperproofness to dosage forms has resulted in technological developments that provide some tamper resistance to such dosage forms.
For example, EP0797424B1, discloses manners by which hard capsule shells can be shrink-wrapped onto tablets to provide tightly fitted shells over the tablet. Although providing some resistance to removal of the shells, a need still exists to further improve such dosage forms to provide a truly tamper resistant product.
Other examples, like U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,767, describe manners by which shrink-wrapping of shells over tablets is combined with banding via a gelatin band or application of a gelatin dot at the apexes of the tablet over the land thereof. However, such methods result in dosage forms that have limited applications, not enabling their use in different target/controlled-release applications (whereby, for example, the use of polymeric shells are rather desirable such as pullulan, celluloses like HPMC, enteric polymers like HPMCAS, HPMCP, CAP and the like), as well as particularly suffering from tampering upon twisting of the shells (i.e. under torsion).
Other examples, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,099, describe coating of tablets by dipping into a gelatinous composition to provide tamperproofness. Such methods however prove costly and may bring along with it inherent contamination issues. Moreover, such process provides some limitation as to the compositional characteristics of the gelatinous coatings that can be successfully used.
A need therefore exists for truly tamperproof dosage forms that overcome the problems of the prior art.